Before I Say Goodbye
by wineybrat
Summary: It was all over, but Asriel just wanted to feel one last time before the end. Anything would do. It had been so long, and then Frisk was there. But Asriel and Frisk weren't the only ones in the meadow with the golden flowers. CharaxAsriel.


(unimportant) **A/N:** I really should have updated my other UT story by now, but my head has been infested with plot-bunnies for the past couple of weeks. This is the third one I've written out but only the first I've deemed complete enough to upload. I might put up the other two, might not. Dunno yet.

May I just rant for a second on how ridiculously difficult it is to write in third-person while keeping Chara and Frisk gender neutral (curse you, binary English language)! It is something I really enjoy about their characters, and it allows for a ton of wiggle room without stereotyping, but I swear I'm about ready to bash my head into a wall. At least it gives me an excuse to blame some of my awkward phrasing on. The rest though, uh…yeah, I'm still working on that.

Lastly, if you love Undertale and haven't checked out some of the original songs/videos on youtube for it yet, I would highly recommend you do. So many playlists, so much fan art, so many perfectly matched original lyrics! Do pardon my geeking. I've had "Serial Dreamer" (MandoPony), "Unravel" and "Duality" (Stephanie Anderson), and "Skeleton Song" (jordan gentry) playing non-stop on my headphones at work for the past too many weeks. I really need to stop.

Oh, and if you get upset with **spoilers** , why the heck are you reading fanfics in the first place?

* * *

Summary: Set at the end of the True Pacifist run during the final meeting with non-Flowey Asriel in the ruins. Asriel and Frisk begin to get far too close for Chara's liking. The spirit does not react well to being forgotten without at least leaving a lasting impression.

Disclaimer: not mine.

~ Before I Say Goodbye ~

The hug was warm, and it had just been so long since he had felt anything. Good, bad, it didn't matter. There was nothing worse than feeling numb. The ones he loved had been far away, beyond anywhere his voice could reach. It was a void where he couldn't even hear himself or the comforting pulse of a heartbeat. That had been cold, but this moment with Frisk holding him just as tightly as he himself held on was warm.

He balled his fist tighter in the back of the stripped youth's shirt. Just a little longer. Just a little tighter. He didn't want to let go. It was hard to believe anything could ever feel this good, or ever would again. A pair of small hands stroked languidly up and down his back, tracing the raised mounds of his spine from just above the protrusion of his tail to the base of his skull behind one floppy ear. Asriel couldn't withhold the breathy sigh that arose in his throat from the sensation.

He nuzzled his nose deeper into the side of his companion's neck right above the collar bone. The small human too shivered, and they held each other closer.

Although it was the end, neither one were willing to let go, nor seemed to be making any preparations to do so. Instead they indulged in each other's' touch and attention as if addicted and neither could get enough.

Frisk hadn't known the young monster for very long but the connection they forged in those last minutes, high off adrenaline and dizzy with forgiveness and repentance, could not be easily broken. That's why Frisk had yet to go with the other monsters across the barrier. The most motherly of the monster family had not understood why, but she along with the other had agreed with Frisk request to go ahead and meet up together later.

Frisk could not leave without seeing Asriel just one more time. The all too brief hug they had shared only hours before was not enough. It had left an aching hole in the human's chest along with a yearning that grew just beyond Frisk's comprehension.

No matter the reason it led them both to this very moment, encircled frantically yet somehow still tenderly in the arms of another. They stood there in silence, the only motions between them being their roaming hands, too desperate to _feel_ to lie still.

Asriel breathed in deep breath. Scent. It was another of the sensations cut off to plant life. Ironically, flowers couldn't even smell the sweetness of their own perfumes. Perhaps if Asriel could smell during that time, he would have realized how rotten he had become. The guilt crashed over him again with the force of a tidal wave. He knees would have buckled under him if it wasn't for Frisk. Frisk, his very own life line, the savior that kept him from drowning then and now. Frisk smelled like dirt, sweat, blood, and slightly of the laundry detergent he remembered from his own childhood, so long ago. Asriel anchored himself to it, earning him a small gasp from Frisk at the unexpected pressure and the additional warm flush that came with it.

Something still felt cold though. There was an icy frost that seemed to circle the small cavern. It had been there when Asriel first returned to this particular spot, an almost caressing breeze. It was sharper now. It wandered between the two over the bed of soft yellow flowers. Foolishly, the two ignored it, too wrapped up in one another to pay it more than a mental note. The chilled presence dropped below freezing. It was not happy. Nope, nope, nope. Not. One. Bit.

How easily they had brushed it off. Here of all places! It was infuriated, but it also knew in control. It would save its anger for another world, another time. For now though, well, it really should remind its dear and bestest friend in the whole wide world about the rules of polite behavior.

Rule number 1: Never ignore me. If we are in the same room, your attention should belong to me and only me. It's only right that I come first.

It drifted over to the smaller form, so familiar from many memories ago.

Asriel loved the way Frisk's hands carded through the hairs that grew slightly longer and thicker towards the top of his head, transiting in texture from the downy fur that covered the rest of his body. They moved with smooth, gentle ministrations, almost massaging his skull, and he hummed in pleasure.

Slowly, so slowly it barely even registered to the cuddling monster, the fingers grew rougher, sharper in their pets. Harmless runs of fingers turned into grating digs, then gouges, until eventually one scratched beyond the realm of comfort.

Asriel yelped a short note of surprised pain. It didn't really hurt, but the suddenness of it left him startled. It must have been an accident and wasn't likely to happen again. It did though. The fingers' next flex sent the nail clawing along the most sensitive zones of his head normally inaccessible due to the hair but terribly vulnerable if approached from the wrong angle.

Asriel screamed this time and tried to jerk away, but the hand had balled tightly, fisting a large chunk of his hair in an intractable grip.

Asriel's face was fixed against Frisk's neck at a tilt more awkward than before. He scrambled for any form of leverage to pull away, shifting his own cuddling hug forward to tug on the smaller beings hips.

They hovered there in a dark imitation of the embrace they had just seconds ago shared. Asriel felt a stinging spot of dampness mat the hair on the back of his head. The human's nails had broken the skin without apology, and, judging by the still unrelenting grip, without remorse.

"F-Frisk! What…" He stumbled over his words, thrown too far off balance to even assemble his jumbled thoughts into words.

The world blurred around him as a sudden motion snatched his head back before pushing it forcibly back down though not back into the aching crick. Asriel clenched his eyes shut at both the cruel pain of the motion and the expectation of a blow.

There was a blunt crash, but more than that there was softness. Something lush and small nudged insistently against his mouth, brushing lips against lips.

It was another sensation of which Asriel was entirely ignorant. Even before the bleak nothingness of being a flower he had never felt something so bitterly sweet. The lips' movement against his own left his mind blank with an overload of information. There was the pain in his head from holding him down, the tightness of his own hands clamping down on the other's waist hard enough to bruise, the tantalizing sweeps of the human's flesh. It was too much to process. He was drowning again, but this time a small part of him didn't mind getting swept away.

The kiss—it was a kiss, wasn't it!—slowed. Then it opened. Something even softer than the lips, and wetter, flicked lightly against the canines protruding from his jaw. It was enough to snap him out of the fog which had settled over his mind.

Asriel's eyes (how long had they been closed?) flew open and took in the sight less than a breath away from his face. Unlike his own eyes, Frisk's were already open and staring unwaveringly at him. It was…not what Asriel had been imagining the few times his mind wandered, even as a flower, to the color of the human's constantly sealed eyes. Were they a deep blue, the color of a sky he had never seen? Perhaps green to match his own leaves. Brown would have suited the honest and gentle human as well. Of all the possibilities, always Asriel thought Frisk's eyes would match the good, kind, and endlessly loving nature of their owner.

What Asriel saw was fire and blood-lust in a pair of grinning eyes. Scorn battled with amusement under an ever present layer of possession. So deep, yet spiraling in vibrancy and dark. They were glaring; they were laughing; they were hating; they were so, painfully, familiarly loving. And it was all twisted together in tangled knots. Asriel knew those eyes. He knew them close, knew them far, and knew them glazed with death.

"N-no! How? It's not—"

"Possible?" The figure—not human (not anymore), not Frisk—giggled a high, light sound of mirth in the voice of its stolen body. It stilled Asriel's thrashing attempt to wriggle away with a simple clench of a hand. Who knew the little human's body had such strength. Such a waste, but here were more important things to focus on. "Did you forget? I promised we'd always be together. Just me and you. Best friends. Forever."

It couldn't be Chara. Chara was dead! Asriel remembered the limp body dangling from his arms, a too pale husk of the one he loved more than anything in the world and the one he helped kill then let die. Becoming a flower may have left him numb, but it was Chara's suicide that hollowed him out first. When he called for help, Chara was the one he knew would never come.

But if it really was Chara—here! Speaking to him now—hope blossomed in Asriel's chest. More than anything he wanted to turn back time, to go back to the blissful days spent with just the two of them. He remembered when they played in meadows made from trickling light and fell asleep to each other's whispered goodnights in the darkness of their room. Always us, never you and me.

Along with the hope, though, there was fear and the knowledge that it was too late. You can't turn back time, and dead monsters do not come back to life. That was two strikes against the both of them: monsters and dead. But there was still one person that fit neither category.

"Why the frown, aren't you happy to see me. Oh, or is that it." Chara's voice, once perky with insanity and glee, fell flat as red orbs gravitated to the pink and blue stripes of a stranger's sweater. "We were so caught up in our little reunion that I completely forgot about our little guest. Tell me, lamb, did you really think you could get away with wandering away? Wolves could get you if you're not careful."

Chara dragged Asriel's head impossibly closer. "And you know I don't like to share. Especially," the tone shifted from teasing to disgust in a hiss that set Ariel's teeth on edge, "with humans."

The anger was all Chara, but the discordantly arranged features were Frisk's. Frisk. Asriel fought to hold onto the thought. Chara was in Frisk's body, holding him with Frisks slender hands, staring at him with bright red eyes that were so very wrong on Frisk's face. But still, it was _Chara_. Asriel didn't know how he ever could have confused the unknown human for his one-time friend. Regardless, he was torn.

"Oh, don't give me that look. The human is fine. As comfy as it is in here—" Chara paused, back arching in a cat-like stretch, "it's only temporary." A frown marred Frisk's usually blank features. "The influence of this soul is stronger than I expected." The last bit was murmured without the intention of being heard.

Asriel exhaled a relived breath. Then Frisk was okay.

Chara caught the direction of Ariel's thoughts with displeasure. The monster, so innocent yet still so tainted with death, still had that vermin on his mind, that little human upstart with the audacity to touch something that belonged to another.

"As-ri-el," a sing-song voice chimed, "what did you think you were doing, hmm? Getting so close to someone else. Look at me! You have me positively green with envy. Or perhaps that was your goal. Did you want to see me jealous so badly that you invited this brat here to put on a show?"

Asriel didn't respond, but the confusion was evident on his face. "What?"

"Oh?" Chara burst out in a peal of laughter, head thrown back and nose scrunching with mirth. Cheeks, somehow paler than before, lit with a rosy blush. Asriel's heart stuttered over a beat. "So dense. You always did act without thought and followed me around like a puppy, remember? Take a look around, Asriel. Why do you think you ended up here of all places?"

They were in a meadow, modestly sized by Underground standards, covered vivacious emerald leaves and bright specks of buttercups. It had been their favorite place, Asriel recalled, and was the one filled with the most pain. They met here, fallen upon a bed of giddy blooms, and one had died here covering them with coughed up red. Not only that, after Toriel took the child's corpse from and buried it among the beloved flora, it was here that the fragmented remains of a broken soul roamed. Having spent so many lifetimes as a flower popping up here and there in the Ruins and the Underground, Asriel had was sure to have known this. Perhaps he had not been alerted to the cognizance of the spirit, but the place and the presence hovered always in the back of his mind.

Yet still he came here imagining Frisk would sooner or later follow. Thoughtlessly—just as Chara accused—he took comfort from another over the grave of his friend. That wasn't something that good monsters did. Asriel's eyes lowered in shame.

Chara smiled and patted his head in comfort, purposefully taking little care to avoid tapping along the edges of the cuts. "There, there." For Asriel the touch hurt and soothed in equal measure; Asriel couldn't help but lean into it. "I'll forgive you if you do just one little thing."

There was no longer a hand restricting him, but sill Asriel stood flushed close to Chara's form. "What?" he pleaded, "What do you want me to do?"

Chara was only a hair's width away. "Admit it." Their noses touched, nuzzling together in what should have been a display of affection.

"Admit what?" Ariel's voice quivered, still unsure. His head again grew fuzzy.

"Admit it. That this," Chara flicked a hand self-reflexively, "is nothing more than a cheap replacement. Tell me out loud that after all this time it's me and only me that you call friend. Please? Promise me it wasn't a lie." The request was little more than a command wrapped in possession and glossed over with batting eyes. It fit Chara perfectly.

Asriel's breath hitched wordlessly. He withheld any response though many bubbled to his lips. Frisk, a replacement for Chara? No, that wasn't possible. Part of him wanted to say, but… He averted his gaze, no easy feat since the two bodies still pressed together with little room to look away.

The obvious hesitation was not welcome. The sweetness in Chara's voice soured. "I see," and Asriel was flung away.

He landed with a heavy thud, crushing an unfortunate patch of flowers. The loss of contact left him cold. He bit his lip to bar himself from begging for its return. He was almost scared. The absence felt too much like being numb.

Chara strolled over casually, eyes studying one stolen hand. The fingers flexed and bent under a considering gaze. "You're new friend is calling out in here you know." The digits spasmed before Chara clenched them tight enough to turn the knuckles white. When they opened again, blood beaded in four little spots. "I feel you in there, trying to crawl you way out. You're so very determined. But then again, so am I." The steps were even and unhurried. Finally close enough to touch, Chara pushed Asriel down. He lay there on the bed of flowers, streaks of red brushing off to stain his shirt.

It had been gentle, and Asriel did not resist. He knew it would appease some of the icy fury betrayed by the furrow in his friend's brow. When they were young, Chara had often tried to mask a short-fused temper, going to Asriel when it got too hot. Asriel had grown used to defusing the bombs by offering himself in any way he could. He handed over his sweets, his toys, his time, his loyalty. It was almost like a game, figuring out what Chara wanted next and granting it before it was even asked.

Chara swung a leg over Asriel's own and leaned over pinning him with legs on either side and two palms pressed against his chest. Now wasn't the time to lose himself to nostalgia. Things were different now.

"You're going to leave me, aren't you." The tremors that shook the body did not reach the voice.

Asriel kept his silence but didn't look away. He still wasn't quite sure why he chose not to answer, then or now. He could have said yes or know, agreed or refused, yet he did neither. There was no internal conflict. Asriel's path was clear, so perhaps curiosity would be the better term. What would Chara do next? He let the defiance flicker into his eyes more for display than anything else. He learned deception as a flower.

"You don't obey nearly as well as you used to. You've grown, Asriel." The statement was said with complete neutrality. "You've grown, and now you're leaving me. Fine. But before you go…" Chara's hands slid up his chest, smoothing down loose threads before coming to settle delicately around his throat like a necklace…or a collar. Then they squeezed.

It wasn't so bad at first, like holding one's breath before taking a dive. There was only a small urge to inhale. Too quickly it grew. His lungs tried to gasp. Not even the thinnest trickle of air made its way in. His diaphragm trembled. He grew desperate to pull in breath. His head got light. Edges blurred.

Chara squeezed tighter.

Black spots appeared.

Still, Asriel's own hands didn't move an inch to his defense. Everything ached and burned from his clawed toes to his fingertips. He felt every inch of his flesh. Over sensitized. He was floating. He was on fire. At the center of it all was the ring around his neck.

Lidded crimson eyes drew closer and closer, dominating the weak remainder of his field of vision. Then there it was. The flutter of a kiss, and the air came rushing in.

When he came back to himself, there were no more vivid irises monitoring his face. The quaking of the body over his own was more peculiar in its absence.

Springing from stillness, the form jerked up, and Frisk jumped away. Horror and apologies poured forth soon giving way to questions and confusions.

Frisk had told him it was all a blur, like something had just taken over and locked away everything that made Frisk Frisk.

Asriel hadn't really been listening. He felt not cold, not scared, just numb. Frisk offered him another hug, believing both of them could use the comfort.

Asriel accepted, but it was lukewarm.

Finally it was time to leave. Frisk held out a hand and told Asriel beckoning Asriel with the pure and simple gesture. They could go together. No one would hold anything he did against him. Their family was waiting for them: the skeletons, the king and queen, the fish and her lizard. The whole world was open now.

Asriel laughed a small chuckle of amusement. Frisk was just like Chara. The path was so clear, how could neither of them see it? It took him a moment, but apparently he knew it even when he didn't know it.

Asriel smiled, and his response to the open hand was "Goodbye."

…/**\\...

A fading form stood with a watering can in hand. Small droplets rained down on the eagerly drinking flowers. All was silent and still in the Underground.

A chilled breeze stirred collapsing dust, sprinkling it evenly over the bed of cheery yellow.

"Chara, didn't you know I'd never leave you?"

The can fell to the ground bouncing and rolling to a stop among the petals.


End file.
